MY husband and I and out two friends were staying in the hotel RivaLago for a week in the end of August - beginning of September 2011. Our common opinion - five stars in service, as it was truly good. The personnel were helpful in ANY kind of request and thought in advance.

For example, we ordered a speed-boat for 1 September with a pick-up at 10:00. To our big disappointment the weather did not seem to be good, cloudy and windy when we looked out of the window at around 8. We went down to breakfast and shared our worried with our friends. They thought the same, but hoped that the sky would clear up. We went for an hour, nothing better. At 9:30 my husband went to the reception to check the status. The owner of the hotel appeared and said that she was actually looking for him, as she checked the weather forecast, which did not seem to be good, and then checked with the boat-renting company for a possibility of cancelling our booking for today and moving to the other day. She pre-booked the boat to us in two days forward, as the weather-forecast for that day looked the best, she just wanted to know if we could accept it. Wow! Impressive!

Another case - we ordered a taxi to drive us to the restaurant in the mountains, but there was something wrong with the booking, the taxi did not show up. As an option we were offered a drive in a receptionist's car by a bartender, which we accepted and all went well. We had an excellent dinner with a panoramic view over the lake Iseo, and together with a bill we asked to order a taxi back to the hotel. The waiter said:

"No, it is not necessary, your driver is waiting for you".
“Which driver??”
“The driver from the hotel, he has been waiting for you for around a half an hour”...

It turned out that the receptionist decided to send her car to pick us up after the dinner. To be sure that the car is in time she was calling the restaurant few times to check the progress of our dinner. When she got a message that we were done with the main course, she sent the car. But we suddenly decided to have a dessert :o), which caused our delay. But the "driver" was waiting patiently for us...

The hotel is nice and clean, the breakfast is excellent, the swimming pool and the area around it is very clean and the water in the swimming pool was being tested twice a day regularly.

The hotel has a direct access to the lake.

A bit tricky with a parking, too little space for a big car and limited parking places. But if you book a parking via hotel, then the place will be guaranteed and the personnel will help you with parking if you are not confident with doing it yourself.

We will definitely come back and stay in RivaLago if we are in that area.